Brand

Sting Sports is an Australian owned and operated producing premium fitness equipment that’s designed to withstand the high pace set by high performance training and competition. Originally focusing on boxing before branching out into MMA striking equipment Sting aims to take its range to the next level by combining traditional manufacturing processes with innovative design and and the best materials on the market. Sting work closely with AIBA (International Boxing Association Amatuer) and has supplied equipment for the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games (among others).

About the gloves

The Orion gloves are one of three pairs of gloves listed as sparring gloves by Sting (the other two being the Armaplus Boxing Gloves and the Armaplus Stealth Gloves) and are available in four colours; black and gold, black and white, blue and white and white and black. The Orion’s feature a velcro wrist closure and you can pick them up in 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16oz depending on what you need.

Sting sent us a pair of White, 16oz Sting Orion Competition Premium Boxing Gloves to test out and give our thoughts on.

Visuals

In my opinion the Orion gloves look very slick, with a crisp, modern aesthetic. The body of the glove is white, with a series of bold, stylised black stripes running parallel with the wrist, up the glove and then across the knuckles. Next to these stripes is the Sting logo, an eight pronged tribal style cross that looks like a spider. Along the thumb ‘STING’ and a stylised Orion are printed, and the wrist strap features the Sting patch and another stylised ‘Orion’ next to it.

Below you can find our Fight Gear Focus video giving you a close-up, visual look at these Gloves. Make sure you check out the rest of the video series and Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don’t miss any of our future videos.

Materials

Sting pride themselves on their use of the best quality and most innovative materials for their products. The majority of the glove is made from premium leather (according to the sting website this is carefully selected leather that’s specially treated to increase its durability and performance) which should help the durability of the glove in the long term, as well meaning they’re nice and subtle when you first get hold of them. The gloves are padded with Stings ‘Hi Flow Core’ technology, which is an injection moulded padding that maximising impact absorption, offers plenty of protection and provides an even weight distribution across the glove.

The inner lining of the glove is lined with another Sting innovation; the Sportline Plus lining. This offer moisture protection to help maintain the inner core of the glove, and is topped with a memory foam material that moulds to the shape of your hand throughout the session, maximising comfort.

I haven’t found any faults with the quality of the materials used by sting for these gloves, they’re extremely high quality, the padding in particular does a great job of absorbing impact from strikes – I know we were testing out the 16oz variant, but even compared to other 16oz gloves I felt I could dig in deeper hitting the pads or heavy bag without feeling the effects of it.

Craftsmanship

This is another area that Sting have done very well in. For the most part they’ve double stitched the seams, and reinforced particularly high stress areas such as the joint for the thumb. All the stitching is very tidy and secure, and the leather is spread evenly across the gloves, with no wrinkling across the knuckles.

The quality of the craftsmanship on these gloves is as good as I’ve seen on any other gloves we’ve reviewed, including the Cleto Reyes Hybrid Training Gloves.

Comfort/use

This is the one area that I’ve found a drawback to these gloves; they’re very tight when you first put them on, especially if you wrap your hands quite thick. I imagine this is mostly to do with the Sportline Plus lining and while it means the first few sessions using them can be quite uncomfortable ultimately once the gloves are broken in they’ll mould to your hand well and be very comfortable.

The other feature that definitely needs mentioning with the Orion gloves is the wrist support. A three inch wide velcro closure secures the wrist, but the wrist itself is very thick and rigid, offering extremely high levels of wrist support – possibly the best wrist support I’ve seen on a set of gloves.

Cost

A set of Orion’s will set you back $150, effectively putting them out of range for people just starting out in the sport or even people who’ve been training for a while. But if you’re serious about your training, looking to get the best possible equipment to propel your training and performance to new levels you could do a lot worse than a pair of Sting Orion gloves; they offer great support, brilliant protection and are made from extremely high quality materials. Whilst they have a steep price tag I can’t help but feel that they’re good value for money due to the quality of the glove.